Dr. Badrawi writes in Al-Masry Al-Youm: Language, Citizenship and Identity

Dr. Badrawi writes in Al-Masry Al-Youm: Language, Citizenship and Identity

One of the young dreamers asked me: What is meant by citizenship, Doctor? .. We talk a lot about citizens and citizenship, and I doubt that all members of society have the same definition of the word or the same understanding of the meaning.

Another said: What about identity, too? Does it mean that all citizens of each country have different identities? Don’t we all belong to one identity, which is humanity.

A young philosopher said: It baffles me that we seek to create a global citizen on the one hand, and confine him to the borders of his country on the other. Is this not a contradiction?

A fourth said: Basically, what is the definition of homeland before we talk about citizenship?

I said: The definition of homeland is broader than just a place, and this is what Dr. explained. Jamal Hamdan in his book “The Character of Egypt”, where he said: The homeland is a relationship between geography and history, and it is a compatibility of time and place in the soul of man. Patriotism is feelings, and whoever knows the true meaning of the homeland generates belonging to it, and generates positive energy that motivates him to work, production and optimism despite all crises and problems.

Home guys is not just a place, not a hotel we live in when its services are good and we leave it when we meet challenges. We own it as our fathers and grandfathers owned it, and we are responsible for it and for its elevation.

In my opinion, the concept of belonging to the homeland is the intellectual and emotional connection that extends to include the connection to the land, history, present and future. Man by nature loves belonging, as he belongs to a family, a village, a city, a school, a university, a people and a land. Otherwise, what does it mean for an individual to love a particular club even if it loses, or to encourage the team of his city and country, and sometimes even go to extremes in this love? I believe that belonging to something of a human nature is like a charge that drives a person to emotion and pride in the success of those who belong to him as if he is an extension of his person, defending him and may die for him.. There is no doubt that culture, education and media play a major role in the accumulation of this love over time to become a component part for each one. from U.S.

The degrees of affiliation for each person vary from the part to the whole, and the only one for all is the homeland.

Likewise, we must not separate between identity and citizenship, which in its basic sense is the relationship of the individual to the homeland to which he belongs, and which imposes rights and duties, and positive citizenship is not limited to mere knowledge of rights and duties only, but is keen to exercise them through an independent personality capable of resolving matters for the benefit of himself and his family. and the totality of the people to which it belongs.

Belonging to the homeland does not depend on abstract concepts, but rather on the lived experience between the citizen and the homeland. When the citizen senses through living with him that his homeland protects him, provides him with his basic needs, and provides him with opportunities for growth and participation with appreciation and justice, the values ​​of belonging to him are firmly established and expressed by constructive action to raise him.

Identity is a term used to describe a person’s concept and expression of his individuality and his relationship with groups (such as national identity or cultural identity). The term is used especially in social psychology.

Identity is the totality of features that distinguish something from another, or a person from another, or a group from others. Each of them carries several elements in its identity. Identity elements are a moving, dynamic thing that can emerge one or some of them at a certain stage, and some of them at another stage.

Personal identification identifies a person by his look, name, attributes, nationality, age, date of birth and place of birth. As for the collective identity, it denotes the basic common features of a group of people that distinguish them from other groups. Group members are similar in the basic features that made them up as a group, and may differ in other elements, but they do not affect their being a coherent group.

The elements that can crystallize a collective identity are many, the most important of which is the participation of the people or group in the land, language, history, civilization, culture, and others.

A number of national or national identities developed naturally throughout history, and a number of them arose due to historical events, conflicts, or changes that accelerated the crystallization of the group.

The first young man said: I think, Doctor, that language plays a role in confirming identity, and I fear that Egypt will lose its identity through the entrance of illiteracy and the decline in teaching Arabic.

I said: You have the right to be afraid, and since identity, as you mentioned, moves and changes over time, but language remains an essential component of it.

The goal of teaching the Arabic language is not only to eradicate illiteracy in form, but the content is the belief that learning the language has a great impact on all aspects of life in any nation. Reading and writing only, it is a narrow short-term goal, but we have to understand that this language is the means for our understanding of each other, that we cannot understand ourselves or each other without thinking, and we do not think in a vacuum, but the mind thinks in a language, and depicts its thoughts with it. And for others, using the words, sentences, and images that the language draws and transmits from one individual to another, or keeping them in memory.. From all of this, the identity is formed.

In order for the child’s mother tongue to be firmly established in the conscience of the child, it must be taught at the highest level and children’s writing, reading and comprehension abilities from eight to nine years old should be measured using scientific measurement tests.

Language for the life of the individual is not only a tool for dealing in society. Rather, it is his means of thinking and feeling, and it is his means of conveying his ideas and benefiting from the ideas of others.. It is his means of understanding, evaluating and evaluating, and then choosing from alternatives.

The young man said: Does this mean that learning a second and third language becomes a threat to identity?

I said: Learning a second language or using foreign references does not threaten identity, nor does it threaten knowledge of the mother tongue in the first place, unless teaching the mother tongue is incomplete and weak. A child can absorb more languages ​​than adults, and we must not forget that teaching a second language will overcome his Arabic language and make his thinking and identity linked to another nation. We are like those who do not want to enter the field of knowledge with others for fear of defeat, and we prefer our victory without competition.

The identity, as I said m

It is linked to the language, but it is also linked to coexistence in the classroom, and to what the student studies in terms of history and geography, and with a conscience that is formed in the classroom and at school and at home with the family.

Our children who learn the second language in more than 50,000 government schools, most of them do not speak the correct Arabic or the correct foreign language, and the truth is that the dispersal of identity has other reasons that come from coexistence in schools with the influence of Salafi ideas and identity that swept the Egyptian culture and this dialogue is not the place to discuss them .. Egyptian identity has been negatively affected by the decrease in the ceiling of freedom and the low impact of Egypt’s soft power on the people.. The collective mind of our nation needs to awaken towards the importance of pluralism and respect for citizenship regardless of religion or gender, and that we belong historically to the first state that arose in human history, And that we carry the genes of the great Egyptian civilization and the Coptic and Islamic civilization.